fuckin’ A

I’ve been a fan of Houston mayor Bill White for some time now. He’s made tangible (good) changes to this city. He doesn’t come across as a career politician but rather is closer to our ideal image of what a public officer should be: Someone who truly wants to make a difference because it’s the right thing to do. He’s not a camera hog like Sheila Jackson Lee (notice she was in front of the cameras a lot at the news conferences the first couple of days after the storm, but once the reporters started taking FEMA and other officials to task, she miraculously disappeared). He’s a guy who’s trying to get a job done.

And he’s been kicking ass through this hurricane situation. I think that if he could personally go out and reconnect everyone’s power, he’d put on a hard hat and do it. That’s why this story is so fucking ridiculous. Mr. White was frustrated by the snail’s pace of the relief effort, so he used “salty” language – I’m pretty sure it was the word “fucking” in reference to some trucks. As in, “You need to be getting these fucking trucks out of here.” So the two workers (women, of course, because we girls are just too sensitive to hear such language from you fuckers) complained — all the way up to the governor of their state (Georgia). So the Georgia guv called the Texas guv to discuss this “incident.”

Seriously? Here’s a quote from the Chronicle’s story:

In a written response to the two Republican governors, White said that he grew frustrated last Tuesday when he visited the distribution sites and found they had nothing to hand out to the thousands of people waiting in line.

“I did use words that I have never used in the Sunday school class I teach, but which were closer to the vocabulary General Patton used when he was trying to keep his army moving,” White wrote. “I apologize to anyone who believed my anger was directed at them.”

Hhmmm. Is this about saying the f-word (and by “f-word,” I mean FUCK) (fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck) to a couple of workers in the heat of the moment during a very trying situation, or is this about the fact that White’s star is shining a bit too brightly throughout this ordeal, and the party of Rove is trying to knock him down a peg? White has been a badass throughout, never straying into the ridiculous territory of Ray Nagin’s “chocolate city.” He’s coming through like a champ, and I guarantee you he has fans across the political spectrum. That always scares the people in charge.